Historical Development of Tinplate

Historical Development of Tinplate

The origins of tinplate can be traced to the tinning of hammered iron sheet, carried out in Bavaria in the fourteenth century. The industry spread to Saxony and Bohemia and by the seventeenth century a flourishing tinplate trade was centred around Dresden, with exports to many countries, including England.
In 1720 a tinplate works was set up in South Wales, and this used hot-rolled iron sheets as the basis metal; this innovation, together with improved pickling and tinning processes, enabled the British manufacturers to produce good quality plate and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain was firmly established as the world’s principal producer of tinplate, the industry being centred in South Wales.
The substitution of steel for iron as basis metal, together with the advent of mechanical tinning machines, lessened the dependence on cheap labour and increased productivity. After 1891 the U.S. domestic industry got under way and by the beginning of the twentieth century, United States production was sufficient to meet the demands of the home market.
In the first half of the present century, the most significant developments were in the production methods of the steel base, in particular the continuous rolling of steel strip. Hot dipped tinplate, however, was still tinned on a sheet-by-sheet basis. The next major development in the tinplate industry was the introduction of electrotinning. An experimental electrotinning plant had been constructed in Germany as early as 1915, but it was not until the 1930s that cold-rolled steel strip was being electrotinned on a commercial scale, initially in Germany. World War II, when tin supplies became short, provided the impetus for the widespread development of the electrotinning process, with its possibilities for more economical tin coatings. The first commercial plant in the U.S.A. was put into operation in 1943; within five years, half of United States tinplate output was being produced electrolytically.
The trend to the replacement of hot-dipping tinplate units by continuous electrolytic lines continued steadily throughout the world over the next thirty years. Further technical developments, such as continuous annealing and “double reduction” of the cold-rolled steel strip before tinning, together with the use of differential coatings aided the remarkable expansion of the industry during this period. By the 1980s over 13 million tonnes of tinplate were being produced each year, and manufacture had spread to some 37 countries.
From the early 2000s, tinplate production boomed in China along with a host of other steel. China now produces about 50% of the tinplate global production which is spread between public owned and private mills and a host of joint venture with Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese companies.
The quality varies across the mills with SPCC tinplate dominating as a cheaper source of feedstock for general line application.
Although the principal application is in packaging, tinplate also has a considerable diversity of minor uses. These include light engineering applications, domestic appliances and toys.
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